REVIEW: Liesmith by Alis Franklin
Working in low-level IT support for a company that’s the toast of the tech world, Sigmund Sussman finds himself content, if not particularly inspired. As compensation for telling people to restart their computer a few times a day, Sigmund earns enough disposable income to gorge on comics and has plenty of free time to devote to his gaming group.
Then in walks the new guy with the unpronounceable last name who immediately becomes IT’s most popular team member. Lain Laufeyjarson is charming and good-looking, with a story for any occasion; shy, awkward Sigmund is none of those things, which is why he finds it odd when Lain flirts with him. But Lain seems cool, even if he’s a little different—though Sigmund never suspects just how different he could be. After all, who would expect a Norse god to be doing server reboots?
As Sigmund gets to know his mysterious new boyfriend, fate—in the form of an ancient force known as the Wyrd—begins to reveal the threads that weave their lives together. Sigmund doesn’t have the first clue where this adventure will take him, but as Lain says, only fools mess with the Wyrd. Why? Because the Wyrd messes back.
Dear Ms. Franklin,
I heard about this book from a couple of online friends and when I saw the blurb I was all over it and asked Jane if she could get a review copy for me. There is a lot that is great about this book – the concept is certainly fresh and the writing is engaging. I enjoyed the way queer was portrayed. (I haven’t tagged the book “m/m” because neither character identify as gay). But.
I think the book assumes a familiarity with Norse mythology in general and the Loki mythos in particular. Unfortunately, prior to reading, the sum total of my Loki knowledge was based entirely Tom Hiddleston’s performances in the Marvel movies. I’m here to say that’s not enough. I suppose for readers who don’t mind a little (or a lot of) confusion or who are happy to wait a great deal of time for explanations and who don’t mind some things not being explained at all, Liesmith might work better. I’m not that kind of reader.
I don’t mind looking things up – there are often words I don’t know or things I have questions about but when it is is a near-constant interruption to my reading as was the case here, something isn’t working. It’s not just that the book is a modern Loki myth. It’s that it takes the old stories and gives them a twist. To understand what was twisted, you have to understand the original. There is some explanation in the book – it is doled out sparingly (I expect this was in an effort not to info-dump – which, on its face, is a good thing) but then some of the explanations end with “stop me if you’ve heard this before…” or “you know how the story goes”. The problem was, I hadn’t heard it before and I didn’t know how the story goes. So I had to look it up. That happened a lot. A. LOT. Just when I felt I was sinking in to all the good and entertaining parts of the story, I’d be interrupted again by something I didn’t understand and then I’d have to spend some time looking it up. Sometimes it was easy but sometimes, it involved a bit of fossicking and that took time. When I got back to the book, I felt like I had to pick up a complicated cat’s cradle all over again. I’d read, relax, become confused, feel stupid, Google something… – rinse, repeat. In the latter third of the book, I tried not looking things up and just going with it. I’m not sure I fared any better that way. I was confused by the ending. It was a little too opaque for this reader. But then, I tend toward the more obvious anyway. The people who recommended it to me didn’t indicate they had any difficulty with following the story, so it is quite likely others will not share my confusion.
I’m also not a gamer but my husband is so I felt like I could mostly follow along with the many gaming references in the story and there at least, I felt a little more like I was in on the joke.
Sigmund wondered when he’d started running on video game logic. He figured this was the sort of thing lobbyists warned about.
There was a device commonly used in the text which threw me a bit. It looked something like this:
Travis rolled his eyes—
(toward Ásgarðr)
—heavenward. “Con call to our Chinese manufacturer,” he said.
In the book, the part I have bolded is in italics. The one above makes complete sense and is easy to follow but that was not always the case (for me at least). For instance, the first time I saw (jotunn) interrupting a narrative train the connection wasn’t anywhere near as obvious to me.
I really liked how Sigmund wasn’t the typical romance hero. He wasn’t even a typical romance geek. He is a bit on the chubby side, has acne and is developing a double chin. He’s not very good looking – except for when he is passionately involved in something and then there is a light in his eyes which makes him interesting. He’s… ordinary in many ways. He’s the kind of geek you might actually know rather then the ones which commonly populate romance novels (ie the ones which are secretly gorgeous). Lain is an altogether different type of romance hero too. I can only applaud this.
I enjoyed the humour in the story – there are a lot of heavy battle type scenes and things get pretty dire for many of the characters, so it lightened the atmosphere considerably and provided a break in the narrative tension here and there.
“I hate to break it to you, but that guy makes Stephen Fry look straight.”
“Wait. Stephen Fry is gay?”
“Ohmigod, how are you alive?”
“I thought he was just British!”
The romance is sweet, not very explicit and the story has a hopeful happy-for-now ending. The relationship is really just beginning so it fit.
I really liked that the book was set in Australia and that some of the Dreamtime myths were mentioned to give the story some local flavour. There is some idiom used which might confuse some US readers but there is not a lot of it so I think it will be okay. I wasn’t sure about the cover. The guy on the cover looks like he could be an Aboriginal but neither Lain nor Sigmund have that ethnicity so I’m not sure who he is supposed to be.
I found the book hard to grade because my overwhelming feeling about it is confusion. I just felt lost a lot of the time and I’m really not sure how much of that is on me and what kind of reader I am. However, while I was often confused I was also often charmed, so I’m going with a C.
Regards,
Kaetrin
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I was waiting for your review to go live to thank you again for this recommendation. I completely and totally respect how you feel and in theory I hate feeling stupid when I read a book too. I know I told you this but I loved it – loved it so much that I had been going around pushing this book on my book friends and buying it for some of them.
My familiarity with Loki goes like this – oh yeah, there was trickster God. The end. I had to look up the main myth too, but I do not know why I was not lost. I mean, I am sure I missed some or many allusions, but I guess to me the story had strong legs of its own, even if it was grounded in myths like that.
Anyway, thank you for your review and thank you for your recommendation. Sorry for squealing but you know how it is when you read a book you are so happy about and want to share with the world. I have not had such a book for few months and now I do, thanks to you :-). This will go on my top ten favorite books of this year, I am pretty sure since my list is not anywhere near ten yet :(.
P.S. – I just remembered that I have a review draft where my overwhelming feeling was of the confusion as to the world building and plot. Heh, and that was also a fantasy, but different one.
@Sirius: I’m glad you did! It may very well be that I’m just an obtuse reader and the book wasn’t the best fit for me. Even in my confusion I liked it. :)
I actually picked this up yesterday because of the Norse mythology angle. I didn’t realize how sorely lacking in that area I was until I found myself totally lost with one of the Iron Druid Chronicles. I had to keep the tablet right next to me while reading for educational purposes. I’m hoping that I have retained some of it. If not, maybe it will stick the second time around.
I picked up this book today: http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Spirits-Judika-Illes-ebook/dp/B003V1WVBG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413336545&sr=8-1&keywords=judika+illes+spirits
Reviews at GRs says it works as a nice reference book. I can’t vouch for it but I’m sure I’ll learn something.
@Kaetrin: NO you are not an obtuse reader, you cannot even say it. I forbid ;). No it was interesting to me, because same as you I am not familiar with these myths you know? If I knew more of these myths, okay sure I would have a stronger frame of reference than you did, but I honestly did not. I guess to me myths were the roots but the trees and plants that grew were great anyway? Eeek, must stop with metaphors. Anyways, thanks again :)
@Anne: There is a lot that’s great about it. I hope you like it.
@Sirius: LOL I totally am! Sometimes I need to be hit on the head with a mallet to see something. Last week one of my friends told me there as a nearly dealbreaker coming up in a book we were both reading and she told me it was obvious and I completely missed it. (Telling me something is obvious is almost the surest way of me missing it actually. LOL Hopeless).
Hi! As a mythology geek from a very young age (I was reading Edith Hamilton’s “Greek and Roman myths” in grade school), I’ll say that the twists on the original were cool, but that it did take me a while to figure out exactly what Odin had in mind for Baldur and Loki, since I couldn’t quite figure out how it would work. Still can’t actually, but that’s okay. I really enjoyed this book, but I can see that if you don’t have a background in the mythology, it’d be totally weird, because… well, the whole relationship between Loki and the Aesir is totally weird in the first place and let’s not even get into the Vanir….
@Twila: I’m very detail oriented and not being able to understand the detail of something hits my frustration buttons. I’m not good at going with something I don’t understand because in my experience, it mostly doesn’t all come together. But I know loads of other readers aren’t like me and this book is so different and fresh and I loved the.. queerness of it. How Loki is kind of outside of gender and even species in some ways. I really hope it finds its audience.
Twila I am well familiar with Greek and Roman mythology too – not as an expert but as an average reader I used to know which God did what had familiar connection with whom, etc, etc. Back home when I was growing up kid who fancied themselves well versed in humanities usually knew Greeks, but it is interesting to me that I am at the same time such a blank in Norse mythology. Growing up I did not even know who Loki was and I love mythology. Oh well, eradicating some of my ignorance is usually fun for me – picked up the book that Anne referenced and will go look for more.
I grew up with Norse, Hellenic, Gaelic, and Native American legends. And dictionaries, encyclopedias, and cards for every local library that would let me in. I discovered the Eddas about a week after discovering Tolkien, and that was that.
For me, this book was a little like a refreshing dip back into the old glorious tangle of obscure references and conflicting narratives. I don’t mind some confusion in a complex story, as long as I trust the author to bring me safely out the other side. Not knowing a word or a reference doesn’t make me feel stupid; it just makes me want to *know*.
I loved LIESMITH for those reasons, as well as its take on gender discussions.
Other readers might not, and that’s fine. Better they should know first, rather than wanting this book to be simpler standard fantasy fare.
@Crane Hana: I don’t mind looking things up either. As I said in the review, the problem for me here was that I was looking things up all the time – so much so that it took me out of the story. In this case, I did end up feeling a bit stupid because of all the things I did not know. I felt like I ought to have been able to read without the explanations – partly this was because friends of mine had been telling me how wonderful the book was. Why then, could I not understand it? My perception of the book was that it assumed knowledge I did not have and that added to my feelings.
There were many things I liked about Liesmith and I’d happily read this author again. I do think though that if readers are like me, they would benefit from some swotting up on Norse mythology before diving in to the story if they don’t already know it.
For those who are familiar with Norse mythology I’d unhesitatingly recommend the book.
Sirius, a fellow DA reviewer, read the book on my recommendation and she loved it. I said in another thread that she is, in some ways, more adventurous than I am when it comes to reading. I said that my mental picture is: if both of us were going down a steep waterslide, she would be the one with her hands in the air and I’d be the one with my hands clinging to the sides.
I need to understand the physics of the story to sink into it. When I am confused my brain is working on the puzzle and not paying enough attention to the story. For readers who don’t read the way I do, I’m sure the book would be more successful – as I said in my review.